Archive for February, 2016

Of all the currents disrupting healthcare, from consolidation to the swing toward value-based care delivery and reimbursement, population health management topped the list of transformative industry trends for the second consecutive year, according to the 2016 Healthcare Trends & Forecasts survey by the Healthcare Intelligence Network.

A new infographic by HIN examines the top areas for development in the healthcare industry in 2016, areas with the greatest budget impact in 2015 and the trend toward value-based reimbursement.

From cost pressures, consumerism and consolidation to a proliferation of patient-centered, value-based delivery and payment models, the state of healthcare continues to challenge organizations in the industry.

2015 was the year of mega security and privacy breaches in healthcare, according to a new infographic by CynergisTek.

The infographic highlights CynergisTek’s predictions for what will come to the forefront of the healthcare privacy and security industry this year, including medical device security, healthcare as a target and more hacking.

Covered Entity Manual is a template-style download manual that can be easily adapted to align with your compliance needs as a covered entity. All content complies with the Omnibus Rule.

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It’s a statistic healthcare organizations know well: 20 percent of Medicare beneficiaries are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days.

Factor adverse drug events (ADEs) into this trend, and the picture becomes more dire.

Enlisting pharmacists to reduce the number of ADEs in the Medicare population is just one goal in a five-point program by Novant Health to deliver healthcare value through medication management services.

“We’ve focused on adverse drug events because we feel they are an opportunity,” explained Rebecca Bean, Novant Health’s director of population health pharmacy. “Many ADEs are potentially preventable, and we know they are a contributor to hospitalizations. We believe pharmacists have a role in reducing risk for ADEs.”

In the Novant Health model, an RN care coordinator risk-stratifies the newly discharged, combing real-time hospital discharge notifications for red flags, such as patients taking high-risk medications or having high-risk conditions, signaling the need for a pharmacist referral.

Once referred, pharmacists conduct a comprehensive drug therapy review, keeping an eye out for adverse effects, newly prescribed medications and polypharmacy as well as general medication adherence issues.

“There could be financial barriers to getting their medications. There could be health literacy issues. Those are the sorts of things we want to make sure we’re directing pharmacist resources toward,” noted Ms. Bean.

Aware its providers have limited time to spend with patients, the integrated health system layers its pharmacists as an additional resource to improve quality performance, to incorporate protocols and evidence-based guidelines such as the all-important medication reconciliation. In an era of electronic health record use, the medication list has become dynamic, with many providers editing the list, Ms. Bean notes.

“We’re also utilizing our pharmacy team both on the inpatient and outpatient sides to gather that best possible medication history, and then teach other clinical team members how to best reconcile medications.”

Encouraged by early financial gains from pharmacist interventions, particularly in the areas of medication reconciliation, therapeutic monitoring and warfarin review, Novant Health is committed to staff development to further its medication management program, exploring certification programs and even pharmacy resident programs.

“We feel it’s really valuable in the discharge space to be able to get a pharmacist involved with taking care of patients,” Ms. Bean concluded.

Eighty-eight percent of patients believe that working with their healthcare professional as a partner helps them manage and improve their overall health, according to a new infographic by the Society for Participatory Medicine.

The infographic also explores the impact of tracking and sharing health data.

Evidence-Based Health Coaching: Motivational Interviewing in Action is the first MI video training series especially designed for clinicians who serve individuals at risk of, or affected by, chronic diseases. Whether you are serving in a wellness, disease management, or care management program, or a primary or specialty care setting, hospital or community program, this series will help you build the practical MI knowledge and skills you need to support your patient health and address the behavioral factors that are responsible for over 85% of avoidable healthcare costs.

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Cyber attacks like the recent hack of Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center are on the rise.

Editor’s Note: Could the Hollywood hack happen to your organization?

The event had all the hallmarks of a Hollywood blockbuster, but this month’s assault by a hacker on Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center (HPMC) was frighteningly real. The malware attack locked access to certain computer systems and prevented the medical center from sharing communications electronically, according to a statement by Allen Stefanek, President & CEO. The medical center paid the requested ransom40 Bitcoins, equal to approximately $17,000and restored its electronic medical record (EMR) system. There is no evidence at this time that any patient or employee information was subject to unauthorized access, Stefanek said in his statement.

The HPMC hack is only the latest cyber attack to plague the industry. In this guest blog post, Salim Hafid, product marketing manager for Bitglass, suggests ways organizations can safeguard themselves against these damaging events.

Data breaches in 2015 resulted in a massive 113 million leaked records nationwide, up from 12 million in 2014, according to Bitglass’ Healthcare Breach Report. This means that one in three Americans’ personal information was leaked as a result of cyber attacks. The increase suggests that hackers are increasingly targeting medical records, which contain a trove of valuable information including addresses, Social Security numbers, and patients’ medical history. As hackers become more sophisticated, IT must take steps to secure data both in the cloud and across all employee devices.

Given the rising threat of cyber attacks, healthcare organizations must be proactive when it comes to securing corporate data. Here are five ways IT can both protect healthcare data in the cloud and limit the risk of a large-scale breach:

1. Control access.

Cloud applications have made file-sharing and access to data easier than ever, but for all the flexibility these apps offer, there are risks to sharing files with unsecured, unmanaged devices outside the corporate network. Granular access controls are a critical piece of the security puzzle in that organizations need the ability to limit access in certain risky contexts. In the case of the Anthem breach for examplein which phished credentials were used in China, resulting in 78.8 million leaked recordsaccess controls would have limited the damage.

2. Encrypt, track, protect.

The most sensitive data in an organization is often the most valuable to hackers. Files with customer Social Security numbers, addresses, and medical claims information are the targets of large-scale breaches. To secure data, IT needs a means to identify the files that contain sensitive content and apply Data Loss Prevention (DLP) to those files. Contextual DLP solutions enable IT administrators to distinguish between devices and set policies to encrypt, apply watermarks to track data, or even wrap files with digital rights management (DRM).

3. Secure BYOD.

As demand for bring-your-own-device (BYOD) in healthcare rises, organizations need to protect data on unmanaged devices without impeding user privacy. What is critical here is control over data as it travels to the end-user’s device and data that resides on the device itself. With features like selective wipe and native mail access, organizations can encourage adoption of BYOD while still protecting data and maintaining HIPAA compliance on these unmanaged devices.

4. Quickly identify potential breaches.

As healthcare organizations are now more likely to be targeted by hackers than ever before, IT needs the ability to quickly identify suspicious traffic and be alerted to potential risks. Administrators can leverage tools like cloud access security brokers to act on that information and limit sharing using the aforementioned access control capabilities.

5. Improve authentication.

Major breaches like Anthem and Premera, coupled with the low rate of single sign-on adoption across the healthcare industry, highlight the need for a more secure means of authenticating users. With an integrated identity solution, organizations can maintain control over the key access points to their data and can easily manage user account credentials with tools like Active Directory. Industry standards like single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, and single-use passwords can also help minimize risk of breaches due to stolen credentials.

These are just a few of the many ways healthcare organizations can better secure corporate data in public cloud applications like Google Apps, Box, and Office 365. In light of the massive year-on-year increase in breaches, securing healthcare data has never been more critical. Healthcare organizations need a HIPAA-compliant, comprehensive, data-centric solution that provides complete control and visibility over protected health information (PHI), a means of securely authenticating users, and BYOD security.

About Bitglass: In a world of cloud applications and mobile devices, IT must secure corporate data that resides on third-party servers and travels over third-party networks to employee-owned mobile devices. Existing security technologies are simply not suited to solving this task, since they were developed to secure the corporate network perimeter. The Bitglass Cloud Access Security Broker solution transcends the network perimeter to deliver total data protection for the enterprisein the cloud, on mobile devices and anywhere on the Internet. For more information, visit bitglass.com

HIN Disclaimer: The opinions, representations and statements made within this guest article are those of the author and not of the Healthcare Intelligence Network as a whole. Any copyright remains with the author and any liability with regard to infringement of intellectual property rights remain with them. The company accepts no liability for any errors, omissions or representations.

In 2014, 64 percent of hospitals provided their patients with the capability to electronically view, download and transmit their health information. This is a significant increase from 2013, when only 10 percent of hospitals provided the capability, according to a new infographic by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

The infographic looks at the type of online access hospitals provide, the growth in physician practices providing online access to health information, meaningful use as a driver of this growth and the impact of online access to patient retention.

Transformational patient-centered models emerging post-ACA are designed to succeed with a core of engaged, activated patients, yet enlistment of individuals in chronic care management, telehealth and other health enhancement interventions continues to challenge the healthcare industry.

2015 Healthcare Benchmarks: Patient Engagement documents strategies, program components, successes and challenges of engaging patients and health plan members in self-care from 133 organizations responding to the 2015 Patient Engagement survey by the Healthcare Intelligence Network.

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Many hospitals are working hard to lower readmissions among Medicare patients. But another patient group—adults covered by Medicaid—have readmission rates that are just as high, or even higher, than Medicare patients, according to 2012 data from AHRQ, illustrated in a new infographic.

Asked by its C-suite to quantify contributions of its multidisciplinary care team for its highest-risk patients, AltaMed Health Services Corporation readily identified seven key performance metrics associated with the team. Having demonstrated the team’s bottom line impact on specialty costs, emergency room visits, and HEDIS® measures, among other areas, the largest independent federally qualified community health center (FQHC) was granted additional staff to expand care management for its safety net population.

Only 24 percent of providers feel their current population health management efforts are mature, but by 2020 75 percent of leading commercial contracts will be value-based, according to a new infographic by Medicity.

The infographic examines three essentials for provider financial and clinical success in value-based reimbursement, as well as details on how organizations measure population health success and the area where organizations struggle most.

When acknowledging its position as a top-ranking Medicare Shared Savings Program (MSSP), Memorial Hermann is quick to credit its own physicians—who in 2007 lobbied for a clinically integrated network that formed the foundation of the current Memorial Hermann accountable care organization (ACO). Now, eight years later, collaboration and integration continue to be the engines driving the ACO’s cost savings, reduced utilization and healthy patient engagement rates associated with Memorial Hermann ACO’s highest-risk population.

While wearable fitness trackers (such as Fitbit and Garmin) are becoming more common, they’re just the tip of the iceberg.

Mobile health devices that monitor glucose, blood pressure, ECG, BMI and more are now available, although few use them and many are unaware they exist at all, according to a new infographic by Kantar Health.

The infographic examines demographic information on wearable device users and awareness of devices by individuals with certain chronic conditions.

Despite reimbursement challenges, the healthcare industry is charged up about remote patient monitoring to manage chronic illness: two-thirds of respondents to HIN’s 2015 Telehealth and Telemedicine survey monitor high-risk patients in this fashion. Encouraged by early success in coaching 23 patients to wellness at home via remote monitoring, CHRISTUS Health expanded its remote patient monitoring (RPM) enrollment to 170 high-risk, high-cost patients. At that scaling-up juncture, the challenge for CHRISTUS shifted to balancing its mission of keeping patients healthy and in their homes with maintaining revenue streams sufficient to keep its doors open in a largely fee-for-service environment.

While a recent Scripps Institute study found that connected healthcare devices had no discernible impact on healthcare utilization, and little impact on health self-management, there are several healthcare organizations reporting costs savings and improved clinical outcomes from such programs, highlighted in a new infographic by Chilmark Research.

The infographic examines five case studies of healthcare organizations using technology and the impact the programs have had on costs and utilization.

Real-time remote management of high-risk populations curbed hospitalizations, hospital readmissions and ER visits for more than 80 percent of respondents and boosted self-management levels for nearly all remotely monitored patients, according to 2014 market data from the Healthcare Intelligence Network (HIN).

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